16 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXV. 



" and strutting round and round, with his tail raised almost 

 " like a domestic fowl. 



" And here I should notice that although, as has often been 

 " noticed, the wild cocks always droop their tails when run- 

 " ning away or feeding — in fact almost whenever you see them 

 " — yet I believe from what I then and once subsequently 

 "saw, that, when 'challenging rivals, they probably always 

 " erect the tail, and I know (having twice so surprised them 

 "before they saw me when watching for Cheetul aii,d Sambur 

 " from a machan, near water in the early morning) that when 

 " paying their addresses to their mates, they do the same during 

 " the preliminary struts round them. 



" I learned so much and no more ; there was a rush, a yelp ; 

 " the jungle-cock had vanished, and I found that one of my 

 "wretched dogs had got loose, tracked me, and was now 

 " careering wildly about the foot of the tree. 



" Next day I tried again, but without success. I suppose 



" the birds about had been too much scared by the dog, and I 



" had to leave the place without seeing a fight there ; but put- 



" ting all the facts together, I have' not the smallest doubt 



"that this was a real fighting arena, and that, as the Bunjara 



" averred, many of the innumerable cocks in the neighbour- 



" hood did systematically fight there." 



In the Sunderbans, where, as Rainey and Hume both believed to 



be the case, most, if not all, the birds are derived from tame stock ; 



they are often caught by the cultivators who use a tame cock as a 



decoy spreading nooses round about him in which the wild birds 



who come to answer his challenge are caught. This method which 



is described by Rainey and quoted by Hume is the common way 



of catching Jungle-fowl over practically the whole of their habitat, 



but the hill tribes often catch them by nooses just set about and 



around some small patch which they bait with grain. 



They are very hard birds to domesticate, if kept in confinement 

 they soon pine awaj^ and die, and if allowed to run about with the 

 farmyard birds they nearly always clear off the following breeding 

 season, though they may continue to haunt the vicinity for some 

 time, months even, after they first take their departure. At the 

 same time they often haunt the vicinity of villages attracted, of 

 course, by the surrounding cultivation and by the droppings of 

 grain, etc. In such cases it is no iTiicommon thing for a cock to take 

 up his abode in some tree or bamboo clump in the immediate out- 

 skirts of the buildings, where he sleeps at night and dail}^ visits the 

 domestic hens as they wander about in the cultivation. The tame 

 cocks seldom attempt to resent his appearance, and when they do 

 they generally get such a troimcing that the attempt is not made 

 twice. It is curious that although in some villages the hens are so 



